If you are interested in knowing what the future has in store for you, you should read this book. You should read it before you listen to tomorrow's weather forecast. You should definitely read it before buying that stock your broker is offering and you should most definitely read it before listening to what any consultant might have to say about the future of your business. The bottom line is that with the exception of predicting the tides, the motion of the planets and the weather a few days into the future, all other predictions made by man or machine are mostly less accurate than pure chance.
That's right, the stock graphs you look at are not an indicator of what the stock is going to do any more than the tea leaves in your morning cuppa can predict the weather. Sherden presents very compelling evidence that the great majority of predictions are worthless. Even the weather predictions are not that good. The weather you are going to get tomorrow is best judged by what happened on that day in the last few years. If you predict tomorrow's weather based on that concept, you'll be as accurate as the government forecasts and probably better.
When it's time to figure out what the future in golf ball manufacturing is going to look like for the next five years, Sheriden points out that all such predictions have a terrible track record. Sure, some folks get it right but if you look at the statistics, it's just chance. There are something like 100,000 people involved in the stock market, with a lot of them making predictions on exactly the same information - including insider information. Some of them are bound to get it right. When they do, they make a big noise.
One of the most interesting facts is that a lot of the people who produce stock investment letters are making their money from the letters, not the stocks. They really have no better idea than you do of what GE's stock will do next week. But by selling you a subscription at $500 per year, they can make a killing.
The first two thirds of the book is excellent reading. I found that the last chapter or two were a bit tedious. He'd made all the important points with excellent examples earlier in the book.
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